Out of the Elder Days
by wedgetail
Summary: Alba, a specialist in historical musical instruments, is recently widowed and estranged from her family. When a request comes in for an urgent consult, she is eager to take the job — money is always welcome and is it better if Alba's mind is occupied. But what she finds is far more enigmatic than she had anticipated. And Gershom, the homeless flautist, seems to know too much.
1. Chapter 1

**Lagos, Portugal**

'Take care of her,' Alba said as she handed the car keys over to the skinny valet.

Had it been her own car, she would never have trusted him — the boy looked too young for a driver's licence. But his uniform identified him as an employee of Hotel Constanza, the largest of the three hotels the AREX Group owned in Lagos. Since AREX were already paying for Alba's hired car, if the boy were to back it into some lamp post, AREX could settle the matter internally.

The wheels of Alba's suitcase rumbled as she rolled it over the broad doormat at the entrance and through the cavernous atrium. Two palms in heavy, marble pots flanked the reception area, where a group of English retirees had gathered. Their agitated huffing and the stoic expressions of the hotel staff suggested they had been there for a while already. Sighing, Alba set her shoulder bag on top of her suitcase and waited.

She had been to Lagos once before. Exactly eighteen months ago, she realised. But the memories remained so fresh and vivid, it felt like only weeks had passed. And yet, so much had changed, it might well have been in a different century.

Back then, Fernand and Alba had been two among of thousands bathing in the azure waters of the Atlantic and lingering in the town's countless cafes. That was Lagos in the summer, you could not expect anything different. She had expected, however, that the town would be deserted at this time of the year — December was out of season for a seaside town in Algarve. The rabble of Englishmen that had formed a barricade between Alba and the reception desk left her profoundly disappointed.

A slow melody drifted in from the patio. The notes of the flute climbed and fell like the surging and the ebbing of the tide. Although the English tourists continued their prattle, one by one, the music consumed their voices as if their complaints were nothing more than the rustling of a single leaf amid half a mile of whispering mangroves.

From where she stood, Alba could only see two people out there — a young couple finishing up their late lunch. Not knowing quite what she was doing, she released her grip on her luggage and followed the melody out onto the patio. The couple seemed to have settled their cheque. They set down their napkins and were zipping up their windbreakers. Yet, even as they walked past Alba and headed inside the hotel, their heads kept whipping back to the man, who sat cross-legged on the parapet that bounded the patio.

Alba cocked her head. The man used a simple flute made of bamboo and decorated with crimson string. No, it was so simple. Here in Portugal, whenever Alba came across a panflute player, they inevitably held a curved Romanian flute or one of the flutes that had originated from the Americas, such the rondador or the siku. That was not what this man held in his hands.

As he shifted forward half an inch, the pitch changed and Alba wanted to smack herself over the head. The man had some variant of a paixiao. Unlike European or Andean instruments, in a paixiao, the pipe holes at the top were cut at an angle of notched. Although the pipes were tuned diatonically, the notches allowed the player to bend the pitch down to a minor second. As a result, the pipe was fully chromatic without losing timbre. It was a perfect instrument for the man's indubitable skill.

He must have noticed he had a new audience. Alba caught his grin as he moved from one pipe to another and the tempo quickened.

'Ma'am?' said a woman in an impatient tone.

Alba glanced back towards the doors and realised one of the reception staff had followed her out onto the patio. _She must think me a weirdo. What kind of person just wanders off like that?_ Muttering a quick apology, Alba hurried inside and reclaimed the baggage she had abandoned. The Englishmen had left, so she now had all three people at the reception desk waiting to attend to her.

'Apologies for the wait, ma'am,' said the woman that had called her inside. 'What can we do for you today?'

'I need to check-in. There should be a reservation for me under Alba Silveira.'

The woman —the sunlight bounced off her badge just at the wrong angle for Alba to make out the name — made a few keystrokes. 'Yes, we have you here. A moment please.' A few more keystrokes. 'How was it getting here? Did you travel far?'

'From Lisbon. It wasn't much of a hassle,' Alba replied, then after a hesitation, added, 'The flautist out there, is he a local? He plays beautifully.'

'He does, doesn't he? No one seems to know who he is. He popped up a few months back and has been wondering about town ever since. Likely he's a drifter looking to weather the winter in a milder climate. But he doesn't bother anyone, so the manager doesn't mind him,' the woman answered, glancing to the patio doors.

Although she had closed them after they had come back inside, the doors did not quite keep out the music.

'He hardly looks homeless,' Alba said.

From what she had seen, his hair and thin beard were styled neatly. The white, collared shirt might be yellowing with age, but his dark trousers and sandals looked near new. _Is that so surprising though? I bet if he were to set himself up in the main square with a donation bucket, he would have enough by the end of the afternoon to buy a pair of trousers._

'As I said, no one knows. Can you sign here?' The woman thrust paperwork towards Alba. While Alba tried to figure out what she had been handed, the woman prepared the room key and added, 'You are in 1405, the lift is to the left. Room service is included, as is the wi-fi. Call us if you have any problems.'

'Thank you,' Alba replied and exchanged the signed papers for the room key.

The woman did not reply. A bus load of new guests and their overstuffed suitcases had just spilled through the front door. Every bag boy hurried towards them and the reception staff were already preparing for the coming onslaught. Alba shrugged, her luggage was not heavy and she was now used to carrying her own bags.

The music might have penetrated the doors of the patio, but the sound quickly dissipated in the vast space of Hotel Constanza's atrium. As she walked over to the lifts, her gaze lingered on the numerous great vases filled with fresh flowers. The whole ground floor was permeated with the scent of flowers, which reminded Alba of that wondrous garden behind the little cottage Fernand's uncle had lent Fernand and Alba for their holiday in Lagos. The cottage had been perfect — the blooming flowers, the crisp sunlight, the rumble of the sea below the cliffs. Here, however, the flowers seemed at odds with the cold marble floors and silver chandeliers. It brought to Alba's mind the kind of places her parents chose when they holidayed.

Her mother would certainly have approved Alba's hotel suite — a spacious collection of rooms on the fourteenth floor, just below the penthouse. Perhaps AREX were keen to make a good impression, but that was unlikely. She was a consultant hired to tick off a checkbox on a long list of government regulations. More probably, while the rest of the hotel was busy, there was a glut of unoccupied rooms on this level. The kind of people who would book a suite this size would not go to Lagos in December.

Alba set down her bags and opened the balcony door in the main bedroom; she had always hated the stale air of a hotel room that had been vacant for weeks. The view was as good as AREX advertised. The hotel sat on the edge of a cliff, the cobalt sea and the crisp, cirrocumulus clouds stretched out before her all the way to the horizon. And below, she could just make out the flautist, still seated on the parapet and playing to a restaurant of empty chairs.


	2. Chapter 2

The next morning Alba drove over the construction site of AREX's new and as yet unnamed hotel. A short man in a tight navy blue suit and tan shoes paced along the side of the wall that separated the construction site from the street. He seemed to be in the middle of an animated phone argument. When he spotted Alba, however, he ended his call and ran his hand through this gelled-back hair.

'Professor Silveira!' he called out with a broad smile on his face. Shaking Alba's hand, he added, 'Glad you could make it. I am Marcos. I am the regional manager for Algarve.'

Alba made an effort to return the smile. This was the man who had hired her and who was willing to pay twice the usual going rate for a consult. From the sound of his voice over the phone, she had expected him to be older.

As Marcos shepherded Alba inside the construction zone, he continued talking, 'I must thank you for making the time to do the evaluation in the middle of the Christmas season. As I understand it, the universities are typically closed a week or so either side of the New Year. We, on the other hand, are working on a tight schedule.'

'It's quite all right,' Alba replied.

She should have been the one thanking Marcos. Her plan for the end of year break had been to read all the publications she had not gotten around to during the past year. There was no point in celebrating the holidays when you had no one to celebrate with.

'If you don't mind me asking, are you originally from Britain or Portugal? Your last name is Portuguese, but I couldn't help to notice the accent and —'

'I'm English. I took my husband's surname when we married.'

Marcos made a sharp turn to the right and led them towards a series of interconnected demountables that made up the site office. 'Ah. Is he also interested in music?'

'No more than the average person. He preferred Anglo-Saxon literature,' Alba replied, every word a hot cinder in her throat. 'You know, it's still unclear to me why this find demands such urgency. Were the required surveys carried out before construction began?'

Marcos had already reached towards the door handle, but at Alba's words, he dropped his hand and turned to face her.

'We did the mandated archaeological surveys, I assure you. We dug up a Thirteenth Century pig troth and half a ton's worth of pottery shards,' he said in a low tone and dropped it further still as two workmen filed past them to get inside the office. 'This hotel's designed to have four levels of underground parking. A number of surveys have consistently identified the lack of parking as — I digress. The point is, these artefacts were found at the very bottom of the pit, well below where archaeologists do their digging in this part of Portugal. In fact, at that depth we should've had solid rock and nothing more.'

Alba frowned. 'And you want to restart construction as soon as possible.'

'We have deadlines to meet, yes. However, we also need to calm the chatter among the workers. There are too many conspiracy theories being tossed around right now. When the new year begins, I need the workers to concentrate on their work.'

She chuckled. _If only half the things I work on inspired such interest._ But Marcos did not seem to share her amusement. He pulled the door open, let Alba inside, then walked over to an elderly guard who seemed transfixed by his computer screen.

'Jan, can you open up the back room for us?' Marcos said. 'And, just in case, this is Professor Silveira. She'll be making an assessment on the artefacts from H3. If she needs access to the room, do it. She doesn't need an escort there.'

'Certainly.' The old man handed Marcos a scratched keycard and nodded towards Alba.

To reach their destination Alba and Marcos had to snake their way between the tightly packed desks and chairs. The office seemed to host twice as many people as it had been built for. Alba was relieved to see that the back room allowed more breathing space. The only furniture in there were the three fold-out tables, which were pressed against the wall and draped with beach towels.

'You brought them up,' Alba sighed. _They always do._

Marcos pulled back the towel on the table closest to the door. 'We decided it was a question of security.'

She was glad to see that beneath the towel sat a wide tray with a folded up muddy cloth inside. The workers had, at least, not tried to clean up the cloth themselves. There was a chance they had not utterly contaminated the piece just yet. Alba set down her shoulder bag, laid out her work kit and pulled on a pair of gloves.

Carefully, she shifted the tray towards her. She did not need to lift the cloth to see that it was something special. Beneath the grime accumulated over the long, dark years this fabric had spent underground peered out meticulous stitches in gold and crimson thread. Using a brush from her kit, Alba brushed off a little of the dirt. The cloth was covered with embroidered birds and flowers, each less than a centimetre in width. When she stepped back, however, she could see that together these minuscule shapes formed a larger image. Alba moved to unfold the cloth and reveal the full design, but rational thought caught up to her.

'A thorough examination of the cloth cannot be done here,' she said. 'The possibility of contamination is too high. Nor am I an expert in historical fibres and dyes. You had something you wanted my opinion on in particular, didn't you?'

'It's just over here,' Marcos said and pulled off the towel from the tray on the far table. 'I expect museums will soon be fighting over this.'

It was a harp. Not a full sized one, but small enough to fit a man's lap. The construction workers had not held back here, someone had scraped away the bulk of the dirt to reveal a wooden neck and soundboard.

Alba furrowed her eyebrows. At a quick glance the neck looked plain, but when she leaned in, she could make out lines of what looked suspiciously like a script winding in long strings around the harp's neck.

Below, on the soundboard was an elaborate carving of a many-tiered and many-towered city sprawled across a steep hill. Like a beacon for weary travellers, a bright light shone from a single, impossibly tall tower on the hill's summit. Alba brushed away a bit of the grime still stuck to the harp and revealed a little orchard nestled amid the city's terraces. The artisan's skill caught her breath, she could almost see the fruit trees bend and bow in the breeze.

She peered for a long moment at the city, trying to take in the minuscule details and marvelling their survival after the harp's sojourn underground. But Marcos' agitated figure in the corner of her eye nagged at her. She had a job to do here.

Alba turned her attention to the strings. Only the four longest ones had snapped and the rest remained taut. Their colours differed, some silver, some golden, some looked like copper. And all barely tarnished.

'Did someone clean the strings?' she asked.

Marcos shook his head. 'No. That's the odd thing, isn't it?'

'It's one odd thing, yes.' Alba motioned to the top of the ninth string. 'Have a look up here. The retaining mechanism for one of the strings was damaged and someone fixed it up with a band of leather. Why would you do that to a piece like this? It's like using duct tape on your Porsche.'

'Sometimes you just have to manage as best you can.' Marcos shrugged. 'There is one more thing you should see. Rather, we dug up a lot of bits of clothing and wood splinters, but this one is still mostly in one piece.'

He shifted aside the remaining towel and moved to the side half a dozen pieces of dirt-encrusted cloth, then pointed to a dark shape inside the tray.

 _This must be why they were afraid of thieves_. Alba carefully lifted it up. The shape reminded her of a Christmas bauble — an icicle twisted into a spiral. But this was not blown glass or glitter-coated plastic. The artefact was cold and heavy enough to be real stone. A spider web of gold ran along its exterior and although in its depths the artefact remained dark, speckles on its outer layers caught the light. She longed to say it was an opal, the way it diffracted the light suggested so, but she had never seen or even heard of an opal shaped like this.

'We believe this was a brooch,' Marcos said softly. 'There was something on the back, but it's gone now.'

Alba flipped it over and realised Marcos was probably right. There was a bar of metal on the back and protrusion that looked like the remnants of a restraining mechanism.

 _What century did all this come from?_


	3. Chapter 3

As the sun began to slink towards the horizon, Alba wandered the wintry streets of Lagos and mulled over the objects she had silently dubbed the AREX artefacts. With a light blush, Marcos had confessed as to why he offered such generous conditions to Alba — his employees whispered the artefacts were evidence of the lost Atlantean civilisation and he was eager to smother out these rumours.

The Atlantis theory was nonsense of course. And a disservice to Lagos itself.

While most tourists were content to relax on the town's numerous beaches, those who looked could espy vestiges of the town's tumultuous history just about everywhere. Lagos had been first settled in the pre-Punic times and then became home to the Carthaginians. It had been integrated into the Roman province of Lusitania. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Visigoths had occupied the town. Then the Byzantines. In the Eighth Century, the Moors had annexed the town and renamed it Zawaia. It was only recaptured by Christians in the Thirteenth Century and the old Moorish walls still surrounded Lagos' old town.

Lagos had played a crucial role in the Age of Discovery. Henry the Navigator had made it his home base, directing expeditions to Morocco and West Africa. And from the front steps of the Santa Maria, where Alba now paused to catch her breath, she could see the remnants of the old slave market. As unpalatable as it was to remember now, Lagos had been the gateway for the African slave trade in Europe.

 _The key to this all is somewhere in these two thousand years of history_.

But Alba did not know where to begin. Usually, the material an instrument was made out of or its design narrowed down the instrument's origin in moments. This one, however —

Perhaps it was better if she were to restart from the beginning once more. She adjusted her scarf and resumed her aimless walk, while the cogs of her mind continued turning.

First, the shape. The harp lacked a pillar, which was almost unseen in European harps. Yet its overall shape evoked a European tradition. On the other hand, the city carved onto the soundboard pointed elsewhere. The helmet-domed towers made Alba think of Kievan Rus', while the scene's overall style suggested something Near-Eastern, although she could not put her finger on the exact culture or historical era.

But then, her expertise was in musical instruments, not architecture or artistic styles. She would need to get someone who knew what they were talking about to make their assessment. It was best she stuck with what she knew.

 _Ok, moving on then._

Two — the soundboard itself. Alba thought the soundboard was made out of willow wood. Not the most common choice, but nothing out of the ordinary either for a harp that originated from the temperate regions where willow trees commonly grew. She was eager to find out what Carbon 14 dating came up with.

Three — the strings _._ Wire strings. Vikings may have been making wire, but musical instruments with wire first appeared in the Twelfth Century. As to their condition, she refused to believe Marcos **'** workers had not tampered with the strings. The ground around the harp had to have been dry, otherwise the wood would have rotted, so the conditions were beneficial to preservation, but metals tarnished over time. That was all there was to say on that point. Except, what about the half-rotted wood and cloth found just next to it?

 _A closer examination of the excavation site would probably explain that_.

More importantly, the harp was cross-strung. That settled it, didn't it? The _arpa de dos ordenes_ first emerged in the Seventeenth Century. A bespoke design had been a whim of some aristocrat, nothing more.

And yet, doubt gnawed at Alba. There was also the matter of that strange script — an alien looking series of loops and vertical strokes that resembled nothing Alba had ever encountered. The harp's neck was covered with this script and when Alba had lifted up the harp, she had spotted another inscription in the same script on the harp's base. That one was short, four words in all (if spacing in this script worked the same as in Portuguese or English). _Was the lettering some aristocratic version of an inside joke? Why then ruin such a beautiful work with that dodgy leather repair?_

Alba sighed and glanced up to find herself peering up at the AREX construction site. She had been too fixed on her thoughts to notice where her feet led her. But it felt right. The mystery would only keep her up all night; she might as well have another look at the harp. To her luck, she caught Jan just as he was leaving for the night. He handed her the keycard and waved goodbye.

As she opened the door to the back room, the light from the corridor offered just enough light for Alba to see the outline of a man hunched over the tables.

'Who is this?' Alba asked, palpating the wall for the light switch. 'What are you doing here?'

Once she found the switch and flicked it on, she saw a man peering back her with a weary expression etched on his face. _The flautist from the hotel._ Up close, his exact age confounded her. There were lines on his face and hints of grey amid dark brown on the sides of his temples. His beard was thin, but not the pathetic wisps of a man in his last days of life, rather as if it were growing in for the first time. And yet, there was something in his eyes. They seemed older than that of any person Alba had ever met. The eyes of a surrendered man, Alba realised. Fernand had looked quite similar in his last days.

'Why are you in here? Who are you?' she demanded.

'Of late, I have been named Gershom. Call me thus. What shall I call you?'

'Alba.'

'Curious.' A crooked smile crept onto Gershom's face. 'Are you the one hired to identify what the workmen recovered?'

'What's that to you? How'd you get in here? I've got a feeling you didn't arrange for a visitor's pass; I ought to call the police.'

'The police will only spoil the evening, both mine and yours. Rather, shall we agree on a trade?' Gershom cocked his head. 'You do not mention my presence here and I shall tell you what these objects are.'

'How would you know?'

'A man as long-lived as myself is sure to know something of the history of the world.'

Alba played with a loose strand of her pale hair. Jan had been the last one in the office, it was just Alba and Gershom now. But the old man did not seem aggressive. More likely than not, he had charmed one of the workers into letting him in. What harm would it do to humour him? She had no better place to be tonight. Besides, the annals of historiography were replete with tales of researchers outwitted by the knowledge of a local. At worst, she could call the police later. Gershom was known around Lagos; he would be easy to find.

'Very well,' she said. 'Enlighten me.'

'These are remnants of a tent my brother Russandol and I once shared,' Gershom replied. 'At the beginning of that war, when all the hosts of Valinor and Beleriand assembled as one among the willows of Tasarinan, one might have mistaken the scene for a festival gathering. Never have more great princes assembled nor more bright banners blew than in those days. But the War of Wrath drew long and so many fair lands were torn asunder and so little remained of what we once held dear.'

'I don't understand.' Alba shook her head. 'Were you in the Second World War? Is that what you're trying to say?'

'We made camp in haste where we could,' Gershom continued with no sign that he had heard Alba. 'A balrog, among the last in Morgoth's reserve, beset upon us in the darkest hour of the night and we could not spare the time to gather our belongings. Truthfully, I am as bewildered as anyone to see our property recovered. The lands and the seas have altered there many a time over the ages, I can no longer envisage how the world in the Elder Days and in the present align.'

Alba began to speak, but could not find the right words. Where was she supposed to begin? Valinor, Beleriand, Morgoth… Not a single one of these words meant a thing to her.

'So are the rumours true?' she snorted at last. 'Are you from Atlantis then?'

Gershom scowled. 'Most certainly not.'

He sighed and reached for the folded up cloth in the first tray. Alba was about to tell him to stop, but his hand hovered over the fabric as if he were too afraid to get closer to it.

'The banner of the House of Finwe, the first of the Noldor. In later days many thought it to be the sun, but any man with a head on his shoulders should see the folly of that. My grandfather died ere the sun or the moon ever rose.'

 _This is bullshit. The man needs help._ While Gershom's gaze was fixed on the banner, Alba snuck her phone out of her pocket, dialled the emergency number, then muted the speaker on the other side.

'You're not making any sense, Gershom,' Alba said, hoping that the dispatcher on the other side of the phone-line could hear her. 'This is the construction site for AREX's new hotel, you're trespassing here. The police should come out and arrest you.'

Gershom dropped his hand and squared his shoulders. His lips thinned as he noticed the lit-up screen of the phone in Alba's hand.

'All my family, save myself, have passed out of this realm. I am the sole heir of their legacy. Is this not my property?' he said in a low tone. 'You are interested in the harp, are you not? My flute caught your attention yesterday.'

'It's some special commission for an eccentric. A series of peculiar events left these artefacts to lie far deeper than they would be normally. It happens.'

'You are not wholly wrong, Alba.'

'Is that so?' she said. She half-regretted calling the police already, Gershom was now agitated and she had to keep him talking so he didn't flee. Alba just had to hope the dispatcher was able to triangulate her location from their conversation and the phone signal.

'Have you seen the inscription on the bottom of the harp? It translates to "Celebrimbor, son of Curufin, made this". Celebrimbor, my nephew, fashioned this harp for me. He had an unfortunate mania for carving his name on any work his hand touched, but his talent is self-evident. After all the ages that were born and have died since this harp last saw the daylight, she still earns to be played.'

Gershom plucked at the harp strings with his thumb. The sound, although out of tune, was full and resonant. However, it was Gershom's hand that caught Alba's breath. Before she had been too transfixed by his skill or too afraid he would damage the banner to pay attention, but the awkwardness with which he now touched the harp made it impossible to miss his impairment. The middle and the ring fingers of his left hand were stumps. All else was scar — the skin, where it remained and the tendons were not exposed, was knotted so badly Alba doubted Gershom could fully straighten his fingers.

'What…' she stammered. 'How did that happen?'

'Do you mean my hands? I took something I thought was rightfully mine, but it was not. This is the price of youthful folly.'

Alba swallowed. 'I'm sorry. I can see why you choose the flute these days.'

In lieu of a reply, Gershom let his hand sink to his side and turned to gaze at the door. A moment later it swung open and two policemen charged in. Alba scrambled out of their way.

'Identify yourselves!' the older of the policemen demanded. 'What's your purpose here?'

Quickly explaining the situation, Alba showed them her university ID card and the keycard, but Gershom did not offer any form of identification. Nor were the police eager to hear his wild stories. The younger policeman handcuffed Gershom, then led him outside.

While Alba covered up the trays once more, the other policeman called to her, 'It was a bit of luck we were two blocks away, wasn't it? But please follow us, miss. We'll require a statement from you.'

 _Gershom was right. I_ _'ve just ruined both our nights_.

Alba trailed behind the older policeman out onto the street. There must have been a malfunction in the wiring — the sun had now sunk below the horizon, but the street-lamps remained unlit. While the policemen turned their attention to a debate about the nuances of some protocol, Gershom peered up and Alba instinctively followed his gaze. It was still early and only one star shone amid the murk.

' _Eala Earendil, engla beorhtast ofer middangeard monnum sended_ ,' Gershom said and winked to Alba.

Shivers ran down Alba's back. She had heard those words before.


	4. Chapter 4

One step after another, Alba let her feet carry her forward. She had been walking for hours. Before midnight and during the fireworks she had not begrudged the noise as the crowds celebrated the advent of the new year. But she had hoped the partying would die down shortly after midnight. Instead, the ruckus had only grown louder. Even on the fourteenth floor of the gilded tower that was Hotel Constanza she could not find peace.

So she walked. At first, she skirted the edges of the celebration, but sight and sound of jubilation only compounded her own discontent, so she had turned away. Although there had not been a destination in her mind, she not surprised in the slightest to find herself on that narrow beach she and Fernand had declared their favourite. Since the moment she had arrived in Lagos, this pilgrimage had been inevitable.

As she climbed down the steps and onto the sand, she glanced up. The cottage where they had stayed sat just atop the cliff that overlooked this beach. But there was no going there. Fernand's uncle was in his eighties and a widower, he could no longer care for himself. A few months after Alba and Fernand's visit, he had moved to an aged-care facility and the family had sold the cottage. Who knew what the new owners had done to it; Alba didn't want to look and risk ruining her memories.

A gust of wind swept away the rumble of the partiers up in town and left only a single voice — a kingly tenor that flooded every inch of Alba's skin with goosebumps. The waxing moon offered just enough light for Alba to make out his lone figure seated in the sand. _I thought he was a magnificent flautist, but this on another level._ Alba exhaled shakily, unsure if she should approach him or flee.

But it was too late, Gershom halted his song, then said, 'Come sit beside me a while, Alba. Both of us are in need of company tonight.'

'Aren't you angry at me?' she asked. 'About the police, I mean.'

'It was nothing worth a grudge. Seeing what was recovered brought many a heavy memory to the forefront of my mind that eve. You had cause to be alarmed by me.'

Alba sank onto the sand next to Gershom and pulled her hood over her head. The winter air had not troubled her while she walked, but now that she was stationary, she would feel it soon.

'I'll order Carbon-14 testing to be done on the harp, that will resolve the question of how old the instrument is,' she said. Since Gershom offered no response, she went on. 'I've been thinking about your stories though, ok, more like obsessing. It's a tempting tale, almost romantic to imagine that the soil beneath our feet still holds real secrets.

'You missed a few crucial details though. How'd you live so long? Are you cursed or are you some exiled god? And you said nothing about that brooch. Is there no fancy story there?'

'I am an elf. We may be slain, but age does not trouble us,' Gershom replied as if that explained everything. 'Why are you here tonight, Alba? Mortals prefer to celebrate in the company of family and friends.'

Alba sucked in a breath. 'My husband passed away a year ago. Pancreatic cancer — he died seven weeks after diagnosis. His family are lovely, but… we were married less than two years; I hardly know them. And I don't talk to my own family back in the UK.'

'Why is that?'

'Because it is.' Alba said curtly. 'Why'd you quote that old poem when you are being arrested? That was _Christ_ by Cynewulf, wasn't it? It was one of Fernand's favourites; I remember him reading the passage aloud.'

'One of my favoured works also.' The moonlight caught Gershom's crooked grin. 'I find the audience rarely favours the same lines and works that the author does. I am glad Fernand, at least, appreciated my efforts.'

Alba frowned. 'Are you trying to say you wrote that?'

'I have lived more millennia than I care to count. Why refrain from dabbling in the popular subjects of the era? I cannot spend all my days transfixed upon the past.'

'But why say it? Did you know I'd recognise the words?'

Gershom chuckled. 'Perhaps the sight of the Evening Star simply stirred the words in me. Do you not find that the present refracts into the past?'

'I don't think I believe you. It's just a ploy to draw me back to you, isn't it?'

'You believe very little of what I have told you,' Gershom replied. 'I endeavour not to take offence. Time, I believe, will subdue your doubts. As to your other question…'

He reached into the pocket of his trousers and produced a familiar brooch. The specks inside the stone seemed to not just catch the moonlight, but multiply it. It glimmered far brighter than it should have.

Alba clambered up. 'What are you doing with it? Hand it over!'

'No. My father made this for my brother. You may keep the banner; it is little more than a rag at this point. And the harp is yours also; I have no use for it. But Russandol's cloak pin I will keep. It is all I have left of him. And of our father.'

Gershom cupped the broken cloak pin in his mangled hands and tilted his head back until he stared right up at the sky above. 'You would think the ages would temper the longing, but no,' he said. 'I am not worthy of such mercy.'

'It's a valuable historical artefact,' Alba replied, but her heart was not in it. Sighing, she added, 'Fine. It's fine, Gershom. It means a lot to you. I understand.'

'No, you do not.'

'Of course I do. I've lost people too. Fernand —'

Gershom sneered. 'Fernand and you were a little, honeyed dream, I am sure. But if you truly understood grief, you would fly back home this minute and see your family again. Are they truly such monsters that they do not have a single redeemable quality?'

Alba glared down at Gershom, who still sat with the pin cradled in his lap. _The nerve of this man is unbelievable._

'You know nothing about my family,' she said. 'Look, they're very wealthy and very Anglican. Fernand was never good enough for them. I'm not going back just to suffer their gleeful I-told-you-sos and incessant gloating about how marvellously my siblings are doing.'

'I am the second of seven sons, Alba. Half my childhood I watched my father quarrel with his two half-brothers. And every day of my youth I fought with my brothers. Carnistir, Russandol and I have left many a bruise on each other and pulled many a fistful of hair. I would like to say we grew out of it, but that might be the most ludicrous lie I ever uttered. And yet, I miss them. More than I can ever say. Or sing. Or play.'

'That's your family, not mine.'

'And if your family were gone tomorrow. How would you feel then?'

Alba swallowed and looked away. In her mind's eye, she saw a procession of oak coffins carried out of the church and a cold, empty house where only the family cat still roamed. Now that she had imagined it, Alba could not quite wave the scene away. Gershom reached up, took her hand and pulled her back down onto the sand.

'Gershom's not your real name, is it?' she said, trying to smother the lump growing in her throat. _Anything to change the subject_. 'It doesn't seem to go with Carnistir and Russandol.'

'My brothers called me Makalaure. I was known for my skills with the harp in those days, thus the name.' Perhaps sensing that Alba was desperate to move to a less sensitive topic, he asked, 'Do you know why you were named Alba?'

She shrugged. 'Patriotism? Maybe they were thinking of Albion — the old name for Britain.'

'Perhaps. Languages are an interest of mine, the cadences and evolution of a language are crucial to a poet. Alba is a curious name. You are right, your father may have been of Albion. Or the name may originate with the Latin _albus_ , meaning white or bright. Thus a reference to your lovely hair. However, Alba is also associated with the Germanic word _alf_ , which means elf.'

'My father would have an aneurysm if he realised he named me after something as unchristian as an elf,' she laughed and a moment later, Gershom joined in as well.

While Gershom brought his brother's cloak pin up to his eye level and watched it glimmer in the moonlight, Alba stretched out on the sand. It was quiet, even the wind had faded away, only the rhythmic roll of the waves onto and out of the beach remained. Loneliness had been Alba's companion for the past year, but it had been a feeling no different to anger or sadness or regret. This silence solidified the loneliness into something palpable. As much as she appreciated Gershom's company, Alba longed to spend the night in human company, eating too much homemade food and laughing about half-a-hundred jokes that only her family could understand.

'Have you ever been to England?' Alba asked.

Gershom cocked his head. 'Of course. How could I have been Cynewulf otherwise?'

'A fair point,' Alba said. 'That was what, a thousand years ago? It'd be as foreign to me as Atlantis.'

'That's twice now you have mentioned Atlantis.'

'It's on my mind I guess. The workers back at the construction site think that's where your harp comes from. Did you ever go to Atlantis?'

'Never.'

Alba propped herself up on her elbow and studied Gershom carefully. 'But the place existed?'

'Certainly. The name Atlantis must come from the old elvish _Atalante_ — the Downfallen. Before it disappeared beneath the waves, however, it was called Numenor. It was a realm for mortals to dwell in, not elves. Likely this is why out of all that is sundered, tales of that realm yet survive among humans.'

'I hope one day we'll find it.'

Gershom did not reply and silence lingered once more.

Then Gershom began to sing. At first, Alba tried to follow the words, but soon realised that he sang in a language unknown to Alba. Nevertheless, images seemed to form in her mind of a great land sheltered by steep mountains. Only one pass clove the mountain range and in the centre of that pass stood an ancient city. Alba drifted off to sleep to the sound of a festival procession passing through the city's cobbled streets.

When she woke, the beach was bathed in sunlight and she was alone. But when she clambered up and stuck her hand into her pockets, she found one already occupied. Frowning, she pulled out Russandol's cloak pin, which was now wrapped in a piece of yellowed notebook paper.

' _I have my songs to remember them by, I need nothing else. But perhaps, one day, this cloak pin will lead you to the truth.  
Fare thee well,  
Makalaure_.'


	5. Chapter 5

**Dorset, England**

' _We knew this land once, you and I,  
and once we wandered there  
in the long days now long gone by,  
a dark child and a fair.'_

Alba smiled. After all the years and all the decades, she had near abandoned hope of ever hearing that voice again. She was tempted to continue sitting here by the unlit fireplace and just listen. Gershom's voice was as rich as Alba remembered it and that inhuman, earthy timbre transfixed her no less than it had the first time she had heard him sing.

But she did not dare linger inside the house — a phantom might vanish as quickly as he had appeared. Alba took a breath and with a strain, lifted herself out of her armchair. Her walking stick tapped in time with each shuffling step as she made her way over to the back door and stepped out into the garden.

' _We wandered shyly hand in hand,  
small footprints in the golden sand.'_

The bright light disorientated Alba for a long moment, but while her eyes adjusted, she used Gershom's voice as a beacon. She found him stretched out on the old wooden bench amid the rose bushes, his hands behind his head and peering up at the cloudless sky. Cutting off his song half way through a line, Gershom climbed to his feet and offered Alba a curt bow even as a smile tugged at the corners of his lips.

Alba flinched _. I thought him old then_. She knew, of course, that Gershom had seen hundreds of generations of men born and die, but she remembered noticing the wrinkles around his eyes and the beginnings of grey in his hair. Half a century later, he was unchanged. She had watched the creases on her forehead multiply and despaired as her once honey-golden hair whitened and thinned. She could scarcely walk twenty steps unassisted. He did not have a single grey hair more than he had the day they first met.

 _This is_ _…_ She wanted to claim amazement, but she was conscious of the anger welling in the pit of her stomach. Alba felt death's callous claws draw nearer every passing hour. Such was the lot of man, she understood. But, truth be told, it was rather like hunger. It is far easier to accept there would not be dinner that evening and that one's stomach would have to gnaw on itself, if one is not invited to witness someone else feasting upon the grandest meal in history.

'How do you do, Alba?' he said. His voice was hesitant and Alba wondered what he had read in her expression.

'Why are you here?' she asked sharply. 'After all this time, why choose now?'

'I do not always live in the mortal world,' he replied. 'There are many a place yet left where a lone elf may brood. Of late, however, I had an inclination to visit some old friends. I was idling in Beal, on my way to Lindisfarne, when a certain title on a bookshop display caught my eye. Atlantis Reborn, by the infamous Alba Silveira. Of all the possible names, why settle on that?'

She sat herself down on the bench and placed her walking stick across her knees. 'I know, I proposed dozens of alternatives. But the myth of Atlantis has captivated humans for two-thousand years and my publisher wouldn't surrender such a powerful marketing tool.'

The publishing house's marketing team had been right too. Already by the time Alba had written her book, the academic community had been abuzz with speculation. In the decade after Lagos, half a dozen other sites offered up sophisticated artefacts that did not fit within the standard narratives of history and Carbon-14 dating only left historians more confounded.

But Alba's book became a sensation. Every university archaeology department in Europe was now bursting at the seams with a new generation of Atlantean majors. The thought that the story of civilisation could be traced far beyond peoples such as the Romans, the Egyptians or the Sumerians fascinated the world. Even two of Alba's grand-nieces had caught the fever. Kyra was writing her PhD in Newcastle and Tessa was supervising a dig in Morocco.

'Are you upset with me?' she asked. She had always kept Gershom to herself, but she was not so naive as to think that her academic conclusions were never influenced by their conversations in Lagos.

Gershom's gaze followed the sparrows speeding over the garden. 'The history of the world belongs to all creatures that live within it; I would not seek to deny mortals any knowledge of their forefathers. And I wonder if there was not a hand of providence in my coming to Lagos that autumn. Yet, I'm uneasy all the same. What will this knowledge inspire? Will it become too perilous for me to venture near mortal settlements?'

'I'm sorry. I never considered what the discoveries might mean for you.'

'I've lived through many an age. I'll manage.' Gershom shook his head, then he slowly took stock of the garden flowering all around them. 'This is your father's house, is it not? You reconciled with him.'

'Yes, the house is the old family manor. The garden though is new. Well, it's been here for a few decades now, but then for an elf —' Alba chuckled, then started again. 'After my mother and father passed, I had the old French-style garden modified to something more organic.'

 _To something more like the little cottage garden in Lagos_. Alba had never remarried; she had never had time for romance. But she made time to stroll through the overgrown paths and remember those long gone days she had spent with Fernand. They all found ways to distill the past into something tangible, she had decided. Gershom had his music, she had her garden.

'The doctors say I'm unlikely to make it to winter,' she said softly. 'I believe they are right. This is a good day, but in my bones, I know there'll now be few of those left. With you walk around the garden with me?'

Gershom's face fell. He crouched down a little and offered Alba his arm. 'Take my arm, I'll help you.'

With one arm wrapped around Gershom's and the other arm working her walking stick, Alba felt steadier than she had in years. They walked slowly, saying little as they followed the garden's meandering paths. Purple wisteria, yellow hollyhock, pink catmint, white peony — every flower in the garden seemed to be in bloom this morning. And above, in the apple and cherry trees, the fruit was beginning to ripen.

When they reached the pond in the western end of the garden and Gershom paused to watch the fish, Alba said, 'Will you tell me how it all happened? I spent fifty years of my life searching for your past and I think I never so much as scratched the surface. Will you satisfy an old woman's curiosity? I promise I won't write another book.'

A silence lingered as Gershom looked up and seemed to scrutinise Alba.

'Gershom?' she pressed. Still receiving no reply, she tried once more. 'Makalaure?'

'What do you want to know?' he asked.

'Well, I'd like to know how Makalaure became Gershom for one. But really, I want to know it all. From the beginning to the end.'

Gershom chuckled. 'I'm not privy to how it will end, Alba, but I can tell you about the beginning.' Carefully, he helped Alba to sit down in the grass by the pool, then slid onto the grass beside her and started his tale.

'In the beginning, there was Eru, the One, whom the elves called Iluvatar…'

* * *

A/N:

Maglor's song is excerpted from Tolkien's 'The Cottage of Lost Play'. I am no poet, so I thought I should not subject people to my shameful attempts at it. If anyone is looking the entire poem, it can be found in the Book of Lost Tales, Part I (the History of Middle-Earth Volume I).

The quote from Cynewolf's 'Christ' is essentially a geeky joke -Tolkien stated these lines were the inspiration for the character of Earendil the Mariner and the entire concept of Middle-Earth.

Regarding Finwe's banner. Yes, Finwe's heraldic device does seem to feature a 'winged sun' and Elwe's device seems to mirror it by having a 'winged moon'. But Finwe obviously died before the sun was made. My guess is Tolkien had a brain fart.


End file.
